


A Night Like Tonight

by patentpending



Series: 13 Days of no-longer Halloween [4]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood and Gore, Dark Virgil Sanders, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 19:44:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17086553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patentpending/pseuds/patentpending
Summary: Roman really shouldn’t be walking home alone. There’s a killer on the loose, after all.





	A Night Like Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the darkest and most graphic thing I’ve ever written (including Powerless chapter 13), so please read with caution. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: graphic gore, murder of a minor character, horror, suspense, and Dark Virgil.

Roman’s footsteps echo off of the surrounding buildings as he walks through the dead of the night.  The skyscrapers loom above him, peering down menacingly at the tiny human below.  Besides him, the street is deserted.  It isn’t safe to be out on a night like this.

There’s a killer on the loose, after all.

The hair on the back of his neck prickles, and Roman hunches his shoulders just a bit higher, pulls his coat around him just a little tighter, takes his steps just a little quicker.  He curses the fact that he even has to be out this late, in this godforsaken city, but work had kept him late and his car had broken down and… here he is, pulse thudding in his throat and hands clenched into fists in his pockets.  He shakes with something worse than anticipation as the distances around him seemed to warp and grow.

On the bright side, Virgil isn’t out tonight.  Before Roman left, his emo nightmare argued on the phone that he needed to walk Roman home, but Roman was adamant.  He didn’t want Virgil anywhere dangerous on a night like this.

There’s a killer on the loose, after all.

Roman hears something in the distance, the softest clanging of metal, as if a trashcan has been disturbed.  He shakes the sound off and swallows the lump in his throat.  It’s just an alley cat or a rat.  There’s nothing to get worked up about.

Nothing, that is, besides the shadows that don’t quite stand still.  Roman can almost see something tailing him, the slightest flicker in the corner of his eye, gone as soon as he turns his head.

Roman feels the edge of the pepper spray in his coat and tries not to let his thoughts wander.

They call him Carnage, for that’s all that’s left in his wake.  They could only identify the first six victims by their dental records, and eight are still John Does.  Roman’s hands shook the first time he went to a crime scene, taking pictures for the official report.  

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” an officer confided in him, pressing a hand to his mouth and looking away, pale and trembling. “By God, that doesn’t even look human anymore.”

Roman’s stomach clenched at the sight, adrenaline singing in his veins, but he was here to do his job.  He raised his camera to wide eyes and started to snap pictures.

 _Snap._ A glittering pile of viscera where there once was a person.

 _Snap._  Blood splattered like a Pollock against cracked brick walls.

 _Snap._  A severed hand, a shiny wedding ring adorning the fourth finger.

 _Snap._  Bones jutting towards the sky from a pink mountain of flesh and blood.

 _Snap._  Thin, swirling knife cuts through skin and muscle, peeled back to reveal organs.

 _Snap._ The face of a dead man, eyes blank and unseeing.

It was the rawest, most horrifying thing he had ever seen. It was a great and terrible beauty.

He kept a few photos, clandestinely downloading them on a flashdrive and uploading them onto his personal laptop. He poured over them later, adrenaline spiking yet eyes unable to tear themselves away.  His pulse roared in his ears as he pressed his face closer and closer to the gore, entranced.  

A hand came down on his shoulder, and Roman yelped, whirling around to come face-to-face with his boyfriend.

“Virgil!”  He yelped, slamming his laptop shut before his anxious love could be upset by the meticulous slaughter.  “Hi! I didn’t, um. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Watching porn, Princey?”  Virgil teased, teeth glimmering sharply in the low light. “It’s because I wasn’t into the corset, isn’t it?”

Roman chuckled weakly, trying to pull his mind from a world of red, glimmering sickly, beautifully under the light. “Just finishing some stuff up from work.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes, impenetrable pools of ink in the gloom of the night.  He was the rawest sense of beauty, adorned with a knife-sharp smile and eyes so dark they could extinguish the sun.  “Everything good, Roman?”

Roman swallowed down an unwanted knot of fear in his throat.  “Perfect, not-so Good Charlotte.” He was only lying a bit.

 

The pavement is slick; it rained yesterday.  Wet cement, a tang of copper, something rotting - it kicks up smells unique to a city that cowers in fear. The sky above is black; even the clouds and stars hide from him.

In the distance, someone is playing music.  Roman doesn’t know the name of the song, but he can’t help thinking that it sounds achingly familiar. Perhaps if he listens a moment longer, analyzes it a bit closer, he’ll realize what melody it is that shares his solitude. He is unsure if he’s impressed or unsettled that someone would draw attention to themself. It’s not safe on a night like tonight.

There’s a killer on the loose, after all.

His heart beats in time with the scuffing of his boots against the pavement. Too loud. Someone could hear him coming from a mile away.

Roman softens his footsteps until they are less than a whisper, easily mistaken for the shushing of a dreary wind. He billows across the ground like a fog, drifting from shadow to shadow. His pulse roars in his ears as the darting figures - real or imaginary he doesn’t know - flicker in the corner of his vision.  He tightens his grip on the knife in his jacket pocket.

A scuffle. An aborted gasp. The heavy thump of a body hitting a cracked concrete wall.

Roman tries to persuade himself that he doesn’t hear them, but he cannot deny it.  Adrenaline sings in his veins, running red-hot, as he picks up his silent pace, stopping at the dingy alleyway to a dark alley.

Only a fool would go down there.

There’s a killer on the loose, after all.

Roman slinks away from the protective glare of city streetlights and into the shadows.

 

Roman had lost count of the times that Virgil came home late, carrying the fetor of rot and slick city streets. He had lost count of the times Virgil fell into him like he was starving, and his mouth tasted of blood.  

Outside, the bodies piled up, and, inside, his eyes were blown wide.

Roman scrubbed away the rust-colored stains on a favorite lavender shirt he found in the laundry, and he pretended his heart skipped a beat for an entirely different reason each time Virgil caught him off guard.

He wasn’t afraid of Virgil. He could never be afraid of Virgil, with his star-shine gray eyes and biting wit and silent comfort on the days when it was all too much to bear.

He was afraid of what Virgil could do.  He was afraid what it would mean if they ever discovered who was prowling through the city at night, leaving mounds of gore in his wake.  He was afraid of the way he sometimes caught Virgil looking at the newspaper reports of Carnage, almost as if he were hungry.

Instead, Roman kissed Virgil with a certain desperation, willing away the coppery tang on his tongue.  He fell into him, just as hungrily, and, afterwards, he stayed up, watching the soft rise and fall of Virgil’s chest.  He was all sharp angles and flat planes. Sharp as a knife. Blunt as the blow of a crowbar.  Poetry in motion.  A dagger posed to cut.

Roman reached out and placed a hand on Virgil’s chest, just to make sure he was here, he was real. Virgil made a soft sound, shifting closer.  He glowed in the slitted moonlight that streamed in from the half-shut blinds, and, at that moment, it was so hard to believe that he could ever do anything as awful as the fantacies concocted in Roman’s head.

But then Virgil opened his eyes, and Roman saw that hunger in them.  “What’re you still doing up, Princey?”  His words were dulled, slowed by the sleep that still clung to him.

Roman didn’t know how to say that he was used to operating on much less, so he pulled Virgil closer, kissing the top of his head.  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured instead.  “Can you blame a Prince for wanting to look?”

Virgil snorted, pressing a kiss to the soft flesh of Roman’s throat.  Goosebumps rose at the slightest draw of teeth.  “Surely,” he drawled sarcastically, “I could never deny his highness.”

No one ever did.  No one but Virgil.

Virgil nestled closer to his chest and drifted off again, breath hot against Roman’s bare skin.  Roman wrapped his arms around the other man, running his hands lightly over knife-sharp edges as familiar to him as his own mind.  His fingers danced on the severe edge of a hipbone, and he stared at the stripes of dark and light cast over his love by the window.

He buried his nose in Virgil’s hair and tried to pretend that everything was going to be okay.

 

Roman sees the body first.

He can’t tell what or who it used to be.  The skull is partially bashed-in, revealing bits of gray mass.  The rib cage is cracked open, shards of white bone jutting into the sky like accusatory fingers.

He stumbles back, mouth going dry and hands growing sweaty.  His head pounds in his chest, adrenaline roaring as his eyes dilate.  Something deep in his stomach twinges.

No.  No, this is wrong.

Roman clamps a hand over his mouth, trying to muffle his cry - not of shock, of rage.  How dare this happen.  How dare someone come into this, his city and… and…

It’s then that the rest of his senses kick in and he hears the soft breathing coming from a dark corner.  Roman’s shoulders tense inside his jacket as he realizes he isn’t alone.  He isn’t safe on a night like tonight.

There’s a killer on the loose, after all.

He grips the knife in his pocket, fights back against the tremor in his hands, and turns to face the killer.

“Come out here,” he grows.  “Let me see you.”

He slides out his knife in an easy, practiced, flick of the wrist.  His other hand bunches into a fist.  “Now.”

His voice is a low, raspy rumble, darkened by anticipation and something worse than fear.  The knife in his hand shines, the starlight missing from the sky above.

The soft breathing picks up its pace, the killer scrambling for a way out.  There isn’t one.

“Alright, alright.”

The voice is familiar, and Roman’s heart skips a beat.  “Put that thing away, Princey; you could hurt someone.”

Roman swallows, hard, trying to breathe past the rush of blood to his head.  He sways slightly, shock knocking any adroitness of language from his head.

He sees the purple hair first, then the patchwork hoodie, then the crowbar clutched in a pale hand, knuckles white.  Virgil steps out of the shadows and into the silvery moonlight, stained with a dead man’s blood.

“What the hell,” Roman rasps faintly,  “are you doing?”

Virgil manages a smile, trying too hard to appear normal.  “Greeting my boyfriend.”

Roman’s knees buckle under him and his head is light and he hears his pulse roaring in his ears.  

“-oman, Roman.”  He can just barely hear Virgil calling his name.  It’s the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.  “Roman, you need to breathe.”

Roman does, gasping lungfuls of air thick with the smell of death.  “Why?”  The word chokes its way out through the shock and the excitement.

“I always wanted to try it,” Virgil says lowly, having the grace to turn his head as Roman struggles to regain his regular breathing pattern.  “It was just… an itch, you know? This thought that would occasionally pop up until it drifted off again.  Every time it got worse, and every time, I had to try harder not to scratch.  And then it just… never went away.”  He frowns at Roman, concern worring the corners of his eyes; Virgil steps forward, dropping the crowbar and placing a steading hand on the middle of Roman’s chest.  “Breathe with me, Roman,” he murmurs, words far too gentle for their occasion.  “Panic attacks are no fun.”

Roman isn’t sure how to say that it isn’t panic that’s seizing his chest and pounding at his heart.

Virgil keeps talking,  _knowing_  in that innate way he has of knowing Roman that his voice is helping.  “After everything that’s been happening lately, I was inspired.”  Virgil taps the rhythm against Roman’s chest with long fingers, flecked with blood.   _Four - seven - eight._   “What’s one more dead man?”

Roman is shaking, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, and Virgil’s eyes soften.

“Roman, baby, I know this is… surprising, but-”

He is cut off by Roman stepping forwards and slamming their mouths together.

 

Carnage sometimes likes to believe that his first kill was an accident, but, honestly, most the time he doesn’t even bother to keep up the ruse.

Oh, sure, he  _just so happened_ to be carrying a knife in his pocket on his way home from work.  It was a  _complete coincidence_ that he was dressed even darker than usual, hood flipped up to shadow his face.   His knife  _accidentally_  slipped between the man’s ribs again and again and again until the cuffs of his lavender shirt - the one that smelled like his boyfriend - were wet with red.  _Whoopsie daisies!_

No, he decided.  It’s better to own up to it.  To what he is.  To what he’s done.

So he remembers the way the man’s bones shattered, with a crackle like a falling tree.  He remembers the way the man’s flesh was softer than he would’ve thought, how it yielded so easily to a sharpened point.  He remembers his first and the one after that and the one after that until they all blaze together in his head.

It’s like a bonfire.  You don’t remember every bonfire you’ve ever lit, of course not.  Instead, to your mind, they’re one.  One magnificent roar of flame and crackle of burning wood.  One wave of heat, pressing down on you.  One shower of embers, drifting into the velvety night to become stars.  One beautiful blaze of glory.

And, really, that’s what his kills were - beautiful.  It’s why he tried to save photos of them whenever he could.

Roman had always been a bit of a narcissist, after all.

 

“I love you,” Roman gasps between desperate, feverish kisses.  “You’re perfect, Virgil. I love you so, so much.”

Virgil makes a sound that’s half arousal, half confusion.  Gently, he pushes Roman back, keeping his hands on the other’s lapels.  Red smears from his fingertips.  “Not having a nervous breakdown on me, are you, Princey?”

His tone is flippant, but his question is genuine, anxiously taking in Roman’s trembling fame, his wide grin, his dilated eyes, brimming with tears.

“I just never thought…” Roman shakes his head, wiping an arm across his eyes.  “I never thought I’d meet someone else like me.”

“What?”  It’s Virgil’s turn to go wide-eyed as Roman’s grin turns smug.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of my work, Marilyn Morose.”

“You?”  Virgil whispers, scarcely daring to believe it.  “You’re Carnage?”

Roman kisses him softly, smiling.  “Yes.”

And then Virgil is throwing his arms around Roman, hugging him desperately.  “I was so scared. I thought you’d find out somehow and just… hate me.”

A low, raspy laugh escapes Roman’s throat.  “How do you think I felt?”

Wet gurgling interrupts them; they look over to see the victim’s chest moving shallowly, one swollen eye peering out at them.

“Seriously, H. H. Homo?”  Roman scoffs, sliding his knife out of his sleeve.  “You didn’t finish him off?”

“Well I was going to,” Virgil fires back, rolling his eyes, “but then this moron interrupted me.”

“An incredibly handsome and clever moron, you mean.”  Roman grins wolvishly.

Virgil snorts, scooping his crowbar off of the ground.  “Nope. Just a regular moron who has infected me enough to make me fall in love with him.”

“Well, in that case” - Roman makes a grand, sweeping gesture towards their victim - “morons-by-proxy first.”

A small, half smile quirks Virgil’s lips.  “Really?”

Roman reaches out and squeezes his hand.  “Really.”  He makes a small noise, then holds out his knife.  “Here. If you want to have fun later, we can save the crowbar, but knives are better for your first time.”

Virgil snorts, wrapping his fingers around the handle.  “Did you really have to say it like that?”

“What?”  Roman teases.  “Embarrassed to lose your murder-virginity with me?”  He puts his hand over Virgil’s, steading it on the knife.  “Don’t worry, Ted no-fun-dy, I’ll be gentle.”

Virgil smirks.  “I won’t.”

They step forward, and Roman presses himself against Virgil’s back, resting his chin on Virgil’s shoulder to watch.

“Up to you now, baby,” he purrs.

Soft, wet breathing fills the alleyway as dull eyes peer up at them.  Roman feels Virgil tense with anticipation, his pulse kicking up.

Blood spills hot over their joined hands, and the breathing stops.

Virgil releases a shaking breath, and Roman presses a kiss to his temple.  “Beautiful.”

Virgil can’t help but agree.

Roman watches him flex his hand, marvel at the glittering coat of red.  “Well?”  Roman asks.  “How do you feel?”

Virgil chuckles darkly, turning to him with that knife-sharp smile and eyes so dark they could extinguish the sun.  “Alive.”

Roman is slamming him against the cracked brick wall and kissing him before he can think to do otherwise, licking the taste of copper from his lips, shivering at the slide of bloodied hands against his face.

“Perfect,” he murmurs as Virgil fists his hands in his hair and tugs just enough to hurt.  “Wonderful,” he sighs as Virgil tugs him closer, growling.  “Beautiful,” he gasps as Virgil wraps those long legs around his waist.  “I love you,” he says over and over until he is drunk on the words, the smell of blood, the rush of adrenaline through his veins.

Virgil laughs, dark and smoky.  “I love you, too. Now shut up and kiss me.”

So Roman does.

 

They leave well before the police even know anything has happened, Roman showing Virgil how to wipe his DNA and prints from the crime scene.  He clucks something about Virgil being so lucky to have him, and Virgil snorts, knocking their shoulders together before agreeing in a voice so soft, Roman almost didn’t hear it.

_I really am._

 

A man walks home from the bar.  His feet are unsteady, his eyes slightly glazed.  His stomach churns; he feels he might be sick.  He ducks into a side alley, pressing a fist against his chest to steady himself.

“Don’t you know it’s not safe to be out on a night like tonight?”  A man in a patchwork hoodie forms from the shadows, a crowbar dangling casually from his fingertips.  His smile is as sharp as a blade, and his eyes are dark enough to extinguish the sun.

Another man melds into existence at his side, a cocky grin on his face.  He slips a knife, glittering like the stars missing from the sky, out of his sleeve.

“There are killers on the loose, after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> @ierindoodle 's glorious art of our homicidal sons [here](https://ierindoodles.tumblr.com/post/179328704029/13-days-of-halloween-day-four-victim-read)
> 
> This was one of my favorites :D
> 
> Also don't do murder, kids


End file.
